CEAC-2021-07-July

Techline
Dead Lithium Batteries Could Find
New Life Through Process That Recycles
Critical Rare-Earth Elements
FISHERS, Ind. — American Resources Corp., a socially responsible
supplier of high-quality raw materials, recently
announced an expansion of its existing sponsored research
program with Purdue University.
The agreement will focus on advancing the purification of
critical and rare-earth elements (“REEs”). The partnership
builds on a previous agreement to advance a Purdue-developed
technology to refine rare-earth elements purification
technology to recycle permanent magnets and lithium-ion
batteries pulled from sources such as hard disk drives, electric
vehicles and wind turbines.
The technology was developed in the laboratory of Linda
Wang, Purdue’s Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor of Chemical
Engineering.
“Purdue has been a fantastic, innovative and commercially
driven partner to work with,” said Mark Jensen, American
Resources CEO. “The rare-earth element purification technology
that we are commercializing is extremely exciting,
and we are both on the same page in terms of getting it to
the market as efficiently as possible. Given the early success
of our existing research program, it made sense to expand
the program in short order to include the feedstocks that we
are most focused on, such as lithium-ion batteries and coalbased
waste and byproducts. Collectively, our process chain
of technology and feedstocks enables us to help restore the
domestic supply chain of these critical materials in the most
sustainable and environmentally friendly and beneficial ways
ever developed. We believe this is where the U.S. needs to
drive innovation and compete with China in this market. The
team at Purdue is an important part of this, and we look
forward to pushing aggressively forward with commercialization
of the technology and showcasing the low cost and
environmentally sensitive technology.”
Given the early success of its previously announced agreement,
American Resources entered into the expanded
agreement with the Purdue Research Foundation Office of
Technology Commercialization to further refine the LAD
chromatography process and technology to include the
recycling, reprocessing and purification of critical rare-earth
elements from lithium-ion batteries and coal waste and
byproducts. The new agreement builds on the acquisition
of certain licenses associated with the Purdue-developed
technology to separate and purify rare-earth elements using
ligand assisted displacement (“LAD”) chromatography, a
technology specific to the recycling of permanent magnets
for rare-earth elements.
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| Chief Engineer